The All Victoria Rally, organised jointly by the Bendigo Car Club and Peugeot Car Club of Victoria, was held on 22 to 24 November.
The event was won by Terry Naish and Ross Runnalls by just 2 minutes and 12 seconds to John Rawson and Dave Smith with John Perkins coming in third.
The BP All Victoria Rally ran in 1958. It was one of the mix of early BP rallies and similar multi-day trials with a mix of endurance and navigational challenge.
The aim of the 1996 All Victoria was to live up to those traditions, across a good part of the map of Victoria. To bring all of this together, the organisation was shared between two clubs and directors with solid experience putting together challenging car trials in the old style.
The hope was that this sharing of the load over multiple clubs might become a model for the future, increasing the practicality of running such multi-day events. Alas the model has not been picked up in the years since.
The event suffered a set back at late stages in the planning when the Northern Grampians Shire Council rejected 100km of sections after being told that one person on the route had objected during the publicity run. The letter to the Shire Engineer had clearly said that as a result of an objection, the proposed route had been modified to avoid the area the objector lived in. Sometimes you can provide too much information.
